Send Me Training Equipping Churches to Develop a Sending Culture

February 27, 2019

As churches Advance in fulfilling their role in the Great Commission they develop a sending culture among members. The South Carolina Baptist Convention (SCBC) is holding a Send Me training Apr. 4 at Brushy Creek Baptist Church in Taylors for mission leaders, church staff and members who are ready to make their next move in active missions. Participants will be equipped with resources to cultivate missions awareness and develop and evaluate sending models for their churches.

“Having a mission-minded church is not the same as a mission sending church or a mission active church. We want all SCBC churches to have an Acts 1:8 strategy, that means we must send workers into the harvest. Send Me will cover how a church prepares its people to be sent,” said Tim R., of the SCBC missions mobilization team.

The one-day training is based on Sending Elements curriculum that a six-member mission leaders cohort completed over the course of six months in 2018. Featured speakers will be Bradley Bell from Upstream Collective who will explain the Sending Elements, and Dr. Allen McWhite from North Greenville University will discuss the biblical basis for sending and taking care of those who are sent.

Judy Davies is the missions director at Gateway Baptist Church in Irmo and a member of the 2018 cohort. She reports that Send Me training resources can help established programs like hers, while offering new information like the concept of a missions pipeline and the changing role of the local church in sending missionaries.

“I learned about new non-traditional missionary deployments, particularly in areas of the world that are hard to access. This is important to know so that we can be prepared to meet the challenges of the future. We also need to identify those called to missions and help them move along the pipeline in identification, training and preparation, field deployment and then productive field ministry,” Davis said.

As the family life minister at Lee Road Baptist Church in Taylors, Brian Pittman coordinates his church’s national and international partnerships that also raise church members’ local missions awareness. He says his experience with Send Me training materials opened his eyes to the untapped potential for churches to be released to carry the gospel, which has given him new ideas to fulfill the Great Commission and changed the way he encourages others to answer the call to missions.

“The need to be better prepared and organized in missions is only increasing. If someone is considering attending this training, they will benefit from learning ways to become a sending church that they may not have previously considered. Send Me will encourage them to make an honest evaluation of where their church is strong in missions, but also where they might need to improve. Ultimately, the training process is practical in that it equips people with steps they can take personally, and in their church, to live on mission,” Pittman said.

To register, visit www.scbaptist.org/sendme/ or from within the SC Baptist app click “So, What’s Your Next Move?,” then click “Send.”